Display hangs after some time when enabling visual effects

There are cases that the ATI driver hangs and performs as you describe. This is due to the fact that until very recently there were no specs for ATI graphics cards, so the open-source driver was in a disadvantage.
You might get some results with the binary drivers, though you have to consult other users to see which version has been good to them. There are a few pitfalls in the process of installing the binary driver. You would need to research in UbuntuForums.org to find similar experiences and troubleshoot.
I am not sure you will be able to get much help here.

This may be a bug: https://bugs.launchpad.net/compizsettings/+bug/108527. There are many ideas about debugging this in these reports (check the duplicates also), if you could provide some info requested there, maybe we could find some workaround. For a start driver settings and options from /etc/X11/xorg.conf and ~/.xsession-errors would be probably most informative.

I am trying to recreate the scenario. I have not gone through the above mentioned bug yet. I will go through it. For now, I just cleared the ~/.xsession-errors file and then enabled the visual effects. Following is what I found in the file:

** (x-session-manager:5259): WARNING **: Host name lookup failure on localhost.

(gnome-appearance-properties:7573): Gtk-WARNING **: Theme directory 96x96/action of theme HumanAzul2 has no size field

(gnome-appearance-properties:7574): Gtk-WARNING **: Unable to locate theme engine in module_path: "murrine",

(gnome-appearance-properties:7574): Gtk-CRITICAL **: gtk_widget_map: assertion `GTK_WIDGET_VISIBLE (widget)' failed

(gnome-appearance-properties:7574): Gtk-WARNING **: Theme directory 96x96/action of theme HumanAzul2 has no size field

(gnome-appearance-properties:7574): Gtk-WARNING **: Unable to locate theme engine in module_path: "murrine",

(gnome-appearance-properties:7574): Gtk-CRITICAL **: gtk_widget_map: assertion `GTK_WIDGET_VISIBLE (widget)' failed

(gnome-appearance-properties:7574): Gtk-WARNING **: Theme directory 96x96/action of theme HumanAzul2 has no size field

(gnome-appearance-properties:7573): appearance-properties-WARNING **: Unknown Tag: comment

(gnome-appearance-properties:7573): appearance-properties-WARNING **: Unknown Tag: comment

No nvidia hardware available
Checking for Xgl: not present.
Detected PCI ID for VGA: 01:00.0 0300: 1002:3154 (rev 80) (prog-if 00 [VGA])
Checking for texture_from_pixmap: not present.
Trying again with indirect rendering:
Checking for texture_from_pixmap: present.
Checking for non power of two support: present.
Checking for Composite extension: present.
Comparing resolution (1600x1200) to maximum 3D texture size (2048): Passed.
Checking for nVidia: not present.
Checking for FBConfig: present.
Checking for Xgl: not present.
Starting gtk-window-decorator
/usr/bin/compiz.real (video) - Warn: No 8 bit GLX pixmap format, disabling YV12 image format

(gnome-appearance-properties:7573): GLib-CRITICAL **: g_array_free: assertion `array' failed

(gnome-appearance-properties:7573): GLib-CRITICAL **: g_array_free: assertion `array' failed

I am not very sure what all of it means. I'll look for more information.

Hi Wrwrwr, mine is the same problem as in https://bugs.launchpad.net/compizsettings/+bug/108527.

I have sent the output of 'lspci -vn' there.

About the .xsession-errors:
- host name lookup failure: shouldn't matter i find something like that too and nothing bad happens
- following gnome-appearance-properties: maybe try changing a theme, these seem to be theme related
- this capabilities piece (present, not present) looks same as mine (with a different, working ati card)
- this is something interesting: "/usr/bin/compiz.real (video) - Warn: No 8 bit GLX pixmap format, disabling YV12 image format", this is something characteristic to your card.
- the last two could mean some memory leak
I wonder if that would look the same after a freeze.

Haven't found anything that could serve as a workaround, but you should be able to make a soft boot even when it freezes: hold SysRq and Alt and press following letters one after another: R E I S U B. Explanation and more such tricks: http://www.mjmwired.net/kernel/Documentation/sysrq.txt.

Thanks for the bug comment, a lot of people seem to be interested, so lets hope it gets fixed fast.

Thank you for the info. After the last crash, I don't see much difference in the xsession-errors except for something related with GTK+ which I understand might be serious one. I have the snippet below.

.....
(process:5608): Gtk-WARNING **: This process is currently running setuid or setgid.
This is not a supported use of GTK+. You must create a helper
program instead. For further details, see:

    http://www.gtk.org/setuid.html

Refusing to initialize GTK+.
/etc/gdm/Xsession: Beginning session setup...
/etc/X11/Xsession.d/40guidance-displayconfig_restore: 11: /usr/bin/displayconfig-restore: not found
SESSION_MANAGER=local/ubuntu:/tmp/.ICE-unix/5601
.....
Window manager warning: Failed to read saved session file /home/lungten/.metacity/sessions/default0.ms: Failed to open file '/home/lungten/.metacity/sessions/default0.ms': No such file or director
y
** Message: Not starting remote desktop server
......

Tracker version 0.6.3 Copyright (c) 2005-2007 by Jamie McCracken (<email address hidden>)

This program is free software and comes without any warranty.
It is licensed under version 2 or later of the General Public License which can be viewed at http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.txt

Initialising tracker...
Could not set idle IO priority...attempting best effort 7 priority
Throttle level is 0

That's all I see apart from the errors related to my desktop theme.

First piece is normal, gtk refuses to run with elevated privileges, i have no idea what process tries to use it that way, but just can't. I get two of these each start. The rest is probably just leftover of a dirty shutdown, if you use those magic keys after pressing 'e' give it some time , so all processes can finish what they're doing.

To get a freeze .xsession-errors you would have to log in the recovery mode after a freeze and copy it somewhere before starting x, so it doesn't get overwritten. That is press escape to get to the grub system choice during boot, choose recovery option, and type something like this in the console: "cp /home/lungten/.xsession-errors /home/lungten/.xsession-errors-freeze", then you can start normally and see old .xsession-errors-freeze.

I guess you can also attach /var/log/Xorg.0.log.old from after a freeze and /etc/X11/xorg.conf, because it would be good to know which driver & compiz version you use and with what options (there are different ways of setting it up, so even given a card and a release version it's not easy to guess). Having too much information won't hurt.

If you press SysRq+Alt+1 (one) and SysRq+Alt+t you should get a core dump (when freezed), if possible saved also to /var/log/kern.log. This may also explain somehing more.

A quite advanced procedure of debugging such things is here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DebuggingXorg.

I have yet another idea :), maybe try installing compiz configuration manager (compizconfig-settings-manager package, system-->preferences-->advanced desktop effects settings) and try disabling most things, maybe it's just some part of compiz that is at fault.

Thanks. I'll see what more I can find.

Its been about two days now and I haven't experienced the freeze again. I still see the same errors in .xsession-errors. I got some compiz updates yesterday but I didn't know if there has been some updates/ patches related to this issue.
Wrwrwr, I installed the compizconfig-settings-manager and tried disabling most of compiz features and I lost the title bar. Except for that everything was the same. I did not see anything new in the .xsession-errors either. After that I could not get back the title bar disabled Visual effects and I rebooted normally. Then I set the visual effects to Extra and its been working till now.

Looks like the question is resolved. Would it be possible to change the answer to "Solved" status?

Same problem with a T41 with ATI radeon 9000 32MB the only way to run KARMIC is to set to "none" visuals effects in change display background. After hard hang, nothing redable in the system logs.

Is there a new driver for this video cards ?

Yes indeed, this is a problem with some of the graphics cards, you will have
to turn off the visual effects to prevent Xorg from freezing

--
Regards,
Vikram Dhillon

On Sunday 22 November 2009 02:53:20 pm <email address hidden> wrote:
> Question #14734 on compiz in ubuntu changed:
> https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/compiz/+question/14734
>
> <email address hidden> posted a new comment:
> Same problem with a T41 with ATI radeon 9000 32MB the only way to run
> KARMIC is to set to "none" visuals effects in change display
> background. After hard hang, nothing redable in the system logs.
>
> Is there a new driver for this video cards ?
>